Flashy Ford Focus BEV stars on Jay Leno Show

Jay Leno and Ford are teaming up to promote the new Ford Focus BEV (battery electric vehicle).

The Focus BEV will appear in a segment on “The Jay Leno Show” called the “Green Car Challenge”.

Tuned to perform on a racetrack specifically designed for “The Jay Leno Show,” the battery-electric Ford Focus will be used throughout the first season. Celebrities who accept the challenge will be at the wheel trying to establish a fast lap time future guests will try to beat. Actress Drew Barrymore was the first celebrity to accept Leno’s “Green Car Challenge.”

As you can see from the photo of the Ford Focus BEV that accompanies this story — and the YouTube video to which we offer a link if you watch it — Ford’s doing a great job of pushing the Focus BEV in exciting fashion.

The paint job is exciting, Ford is pairing BEV to racing to combat the image of EVs as slow, and Ford is using a European Focus — European models always seem to be sportier looking than the American models — to boot.

Next up for Ford — we hope: Actively promoting the Focus BEV’s true green potential by creating a brand new promotional campaign.

Here’s our suggestion: Paint it green and plaster scenes of nature on it. Next, do a photo and video shoot of it plugging into a solar carport.

Then, build up excitement for the Focus BEV in the green community with a PR campaign that gets the photos and video footage of the Focus BEV plugging into the sun into media outlets like Sierra Club Magazine, Audubon, Outside, the Discovery Channel, and, last, but certainly not least, SolarChargedDriving.Com!

About The Author

Christof Demont-Heinrich is founder, creator and editor of SolarChargedDriving.Com, which he launched in September 2009. A journalism professor at the University of Denver (DU), Demont-Heinrich is a lifelong environmentalist who loves to bird, hike, camp, and bike. As passionate as he is about the environment -- and about promoting the synergy between solar power and electric cars, he is equally passionate about writing.